Influence without Charisma: on the Sociality of Social Media

24 October, 3-5pm, Porcelaenshaven 18B, Room 3.135

Adam Arvidsson, University of Milano

‘Influence without Charisma: on the Sociality of Social Media’

Adam is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano. He is the author of Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture (Routledge 2006), and has published on social production, ‘creativity’ and creative industries, and the political economy of cognitive capitalism in general. His latest book on the Ethical Economy is from Columbia University Press (September 2013). The presentation will be followed by a wine reception and the launch of Adam’s latest book, The Ethical Economy: Rebuilding Trust after the Crisis.

This seminar is part of the Public Lecture Series at CBS:

Public Sphere, Crowd Sentiments and the Brain

Sponsored by the Public-Private Research Platform

Recent discussions in both strategic management and critical management studies have hailed the coming of a new era of democratized forms of the co-creation of value within business systems, an era of democratic participation of consumers and citizens as professional consumers (‘prosumers’) and co-creators of innovation. Behind this reassessment of value-creation structures lies the justified frustration with contemporary forms of capitalism and its lack of attention to social justice and environmental sustainability. Many contributors to these debates, like Eric von Hippel, Adam Arvidsson, C. K. Prahalad, and Russell L. Ackoff, suggest that the restructuring of capitalism around modes of public deliberation stands a higher chance of meeting future needs for more sustainable, responsive, flexible, and globally inclusive forms of economic organizing.

Curiously, these visions rely on the notion of ‘productive publics’ and ‘productive collectives’ in the form of actual and virtual crowds. The production of an open-access software, the targeting of a misbehaving corporation through a Facebook campaign, and the emergence of a crowd-sourced service or product through the interaction between firms and twitter- and wiki-communities all have in common the assumption that there exists what James Surowiecki has called the ‘wisdom of the crowds’.

The remarkable return of ‘the crowd’ and its wise foolishness is the subject of this public lecture series which aims to bring together researchers and activist to discuss the themes of public sphere, crowd behaviour, economic organizing, and recent advances in neuroeconomic and neuromarketing research. The lecture series aims at widening the conversation about how much crowd psychology there is in current neuroeconomic and neuromarketing research, and what the return of fin-de-siècle crowd psychology means for the ontology, methodology and axiology of theorizing in contemporary management and organization research. In the same vein, our guest lecturers will raise the question whether the rapidly growing interest in neuroscientific methods in economics, marketing and management might provide the stimulus for the integration of social and natural sciences.

Organizers:

Christian Borch (cbo.lpf@cbs.dk), Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy. Porcelaenshaven 18B, DK-2000 Frederiksberg.

Thomas Z. Ramsøy (tzr.marktg@cbs.dk), Head of the Decision Neuroscience Research Group at the Department of Marketing, Solbjerg Plads 3C, DK-2000 Frederiksberg.   

Stefan Schwarzkopf (ssc.lpf@cbs.dk), Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy. Porcelaenshaven 18B, DK-2000 Frederiksberg.